I can't do that.
'Why not?'
They know where I am.
Slater glanced up, looking for Croder, but couldn't see him. He looked down again, leaning forward over the desk of the console, thinking. Slater was new at the signals boards. We always feel vulnerable, with someone new.
'You mean you can't get clear?'
No way.
The voice on the radio was steady enough, but I caught a tone of false nonchalance; probably the others did too. I'd spoken like that myself in the earlier missions; when you're certain you can't get clear and all you can do is let them come for you or pop the capsule, your voice sounds like this at the signals board in London, because your greatest fear of them all is of sounding scared.
'Look,' Slater said, 'if we can do anything, we will. But — hold it a minute.'
Croder had come in and Slater told him the problem. Croder took over the microphone, his mechanical hand resting on the desk like a steel skeleton. 'Stay precisely where you are and wait for dark. At some time before midnight you'll get a signal from the embassy. If they can reach you, they will. If they can't — ' he broke off and there was dead silence in the signals room and I noticed Holmes swallowing '- then I shall trust in your own discretion.'
The Bureau can't actually tell you to use the capsule; all they can do is to issue you one in Clearance when you go out. But if you've really got your back to the wall and there's any major information inside your head the opposition could get out of you, then your 'discretion' is expected.
We didn't find the contact. Instructions?
Different voice, different board. There were three in here. Slater's had Pineapple chalked at the top of the black formica console; this one had Quarry. No one had told me what the code name for my own mission would be, but at this stage they were going from P to Q
'Get hold of your director in the field. It's his job. Ask for a new rendezvous. Weston's ETA is 11:06 hours and you'll have to be at the airport by then.'
Roger.
There was some morse beeping somewhere; we wouldn't have anyone using it; it was just part of the slush. I saw Holmes turning away and pouring himself some more coffee, worried sick about the executive for Pineapple. He always worries, being more human, I suppose, than the rest of us.
Not that I was all that cool. I'd got on the first plane, according to instructions, and they'd shoved me into a police car at Heathrow and dumped me outside the building ten minutes ago and if I never hear another siren again I won't complain: it's not the most reassuring of noises.
She's just a bloody whore.
Malone's voice, you couldn't mistake it. Costain, sitting at Peashooter, said briefly, 'Explain.'
That word from a signaller means a bit more than it says. It means shut up and mind your language and give exact details, because one of the top Controls is in the room.
C–Charlie told me the silly bitch was a Venus trap for the militia but he was dead wrong. She's just a tart. One thousand pesos and not even a good fuck.
It was no use telling Malone what the word 'explain' meant. He was furious; he hates wasting time in the field.
'Tell C–Charlie to report. Where is he now?'
At field base. Now listen, I want new instructions.
The lights dimmed, flickered and came back on, less bright now. 'Power cut,' someone said. 'It's the storm.'
Most of the high-ceilinged room was almost dark; the consoles stood out like ships in harbour at night, lit overall. There were no windows here; this was the basement.
Two people were talking on the other side of Quarry, one of them Stapely, back from Sri Lanka with no injuries and mission completed in the record books. I didn't know the other one. The auxiliary generators had started humming and Costain was talking to his ferret and Holmes was standing near Pineapple, brooding, when the door opened and Shepley came in and the atmosphere changed at once. Even Croder hadn't got this kind of presence in the signals room. I'd never seen him here before, never known him control a mission personally.
'When did you get in?' His voice quiet, no expression.
'Ten minutes ago.'
He watched me in the wash of light from the boards, looking for any signs in me that I was nervy. I didn't show anything. He'd thrown an ultra-grade operation into my lap and put me into a rendezvous with a KGB colonel east of the Curtain and I'd turned the whole thing down because of cold feet — he knew that — and changed my mind and put my neck under the sword and he was looking for any sign that it had built up my stress level to a point where I couldn't be sent out. He didn't know me personally, had never seen me before the meeting in the underground garage in Berlin, and all he'd got to go on was my track record and he wasn't a man to make a major decision without checking me out at close quarters and with a lot of eye contact. The interrogation cells — the really effective ones — had people like this in them and I knew their style.
Softly, 'What made you change your mind?'
Anyone else, even Croder, would have taken me somewhere else and asked things like that in private. There was no traffic on the boards at this precise moment and you could hear even this man's voice quite clearly. The others in the room were listening hard because this was Bureau One they'd got in here and it amounted to a priority-alert phase at the end of a grinding mission.
'Personal pride.'
His head turned a degree more to the left, favouring his right ear, 'Oh really?
'Yes.'
He went on watching me obliquely with his washed-out blue eyes while I spent the time trying to guess what his next question would be, but it was difficult because it wasn't just a stare he was giving me; I had that feeling again that he was thought-reading, tinkering with the cerebral energies.
'Very well.'
No more questions, then. I felt a palpable break between us, between our personae, when he turned away and stood with his hands in his side-pockets, the glow from the signals boards highlighting his straw-coloured hair.
'Mr Croder, what's your position?'
'The executive's in a tight red sector, sir, and I've asked the embassy to see if they can get him clear.'
'Do you believe they can?'
Beat.
'No.'
Shepley turned his head a little. 'Is he a married man?'
'Yes, sir. Three years.'
Shepley looked across at Costain. 'What about your operation?'
'Malone's gone in, sir, and he's well placed. We're looking for a winner.'
'Malone. He was in Keyhole?'
The signaller glanced across at Croder, who nodded. 'Yes.'
Shepley looked at the man running Quarry. 'What about you?'
'We went into the end-phase early this morning, sir. I'm waiting for completion.'
'What are the chances?'
'First rate, sir. I won't be handing over at this stage.'
Shepley took a step closer to Pineapple, and Croder moved with him. 'Mr Croder, where is Fosdick?'
'Milan, sir. He's on standby, with contact through one of our sleepers.'
'And Stoner?'
'I'll need to ask.' Croder went across to the central phone console. Shepley took another step nearer Pineapple, scanning the chalked lines of information on the board: running-time, status, phase, target, with map references and a quickscan chart of the executive's environment; backups, contacts, communications, travel patterns.
Quarry.
'Yes — yes?'
Shepley's head turned and Croder looked across at the board from the phone console.
I've put him in a car for them.
'You've got him?'
That's right. He's a bit dopy but he'll be back to normal by the time they reach the border.
I was watching the black plastic speaker-grille on the console. We all were.
'His papers are good?'
They're perfect. Calthrop did them for us.
Holmes glanced across at me and back to the board. Croder wasn't talking on the phone, just holding it with the contact down. I'd never been here in this room when a mission was running clear through the end-phase to the objective with the voice of the executive himself on the speaker. We're usually in the Caff, hanging around on standby between missions, when we get this kind of news at second hand:
Winthrop's moving in but Control says he's taking too much risk. Someone told me Fanfare's coming apart but they're sending Kennedy in to see if he can patch it up. And Donavon's bought it in Beirut only last night. But it's never reliable.
'Can you pull out okay?'
No problem. Clean up the base, send a little smoke out, then I'm leaving. All right with you?
'Yes, but keep in contact.'
The signaller flipped a switch and Shepley asked, 'Who is the executive?'
'Roberts, sir. Sending a dissident across.'
Slumped in a car with false papers, a couple of our people with him, their faces calm but their stomachs cold as they neared the frontier and the checkpoint and the end of their mission — the end of Quarry, whether or not they got the man through. I didn't know who he was, but he wouldn't be small fry if the Bureau were bringing him across.
A Soviet dissident, whose name is being withheld for the sake of his family and friends, reached London last night from West Germany, after successfully crossing the frontier from the east. His application for asylum is being considered by the Foreign Office, and is expected to be approved.
And tomorrow, and the days, the weeks after tomorrow, the debriefers would be sitting around the table, going through the wads of paper the man had brought with him, their hands shuffling them with the avarice of men seeking gold, while somewhere else, in the stuffy little offices of Her Majesty's government, other men would be clearing their desks with their hands shaking, the quiet and industrious little moles blown out of their skins and with only a dog's chance of getting across the Channel and running for home.
'Tell him to report here,' I heard Croder saying at the phone console, 'as soon as he can. This is fully urgent.' He came back to the signals board where Shepley was waiting. 'Stoner's in London, sir. They're calling him in right away.'
Shepley nodded slightly. 'Very well. Meanwhile, get Fosdick into Prague, very quickly indeed.' He took another pace and put a hand on the signaller's shoulder, dropping onto the stool and opening the transmission.
'This is Bureau One. Please acknowledge.'
Hear you, sir.
'I am obliged to shut down on your mission, and this is the last signal you'll receive. But I'm sending two agents to your sector with all possible despatch. They are highly experienced in these situations, and it's vital you remain where you are. Be of good cheer.'
He touched the switch and got off the stool and went over to Croder at the central console. Croder had a phone in his hand but cupped the mouthpiece. 'Get those two people into the sector,' Shepley said, 'and tell them to gun him clear if they have to. Who's chief in here?'
'Myers, sir.'
'Tell him I want that board cleared and reset for my own operation. What's the next code name available?'
'Quickstep.'
'Very well. I want it operational as soon as Myers can do it.' He turned his head. 'Quiller, we'll go in there.'
It was one of the crew rooms, the bed made under an army blanket and the signaller's things scattered around: windcheater, track shoes, a pair of five-pound weights, copy of Omni, couple of paperbacks, one of them by P. D. James. He'd be the man running Quarry through the end-phase: first rate, sir. I won't be handing over at this stage.
'All right,' Shepley said, and pushed the door shut. 'Personal pride. I suppose that's the only reason we ever do anything, anything worth doing. But why did you turn Yasolev down in the first place?'
He pulled the small upright chair away from the desk and put a foot on the seat, resting one arm across his knee. I didn't want to sit on the bed, the only place left. In the short time I'd known this man I'd learned to stay on my feet in his company: you can't sit down and relax when he's busy fine-tuning your reflexes.
'Yasolev's a career man,' I said. 'He'll sacrifice me without even thinking about it, if it suits him.'
'I don't doubt he'd try. But you'll be given very considerable protection. I'm at present hand-picking your support in the field.'
'I expected that too, sir. The thing is, I don't like a lot of people around when I'm working. Ours or theirs.'
'Then you'll have to adjust, at least on our side. There's no other way, if you want the mission. We also have the hostage. He took a lot of getting.' I felt that snapping of tension again as he took his eyes off me for the first time, looking down at his hands. 'I'm assuming your change of mind was final, or we wouldn't be in here.'
'Whatever the terms.'
'Very well. As a matter of fact they've improved. When I talked to Yasolev on the phone while you were airborne, he believed he'd lost you. He was therefore ready to listen when I made a few demands on your behalf.' His head swung up. 'What would they have been, if you'd made them yourself?'
'Contact with Yasolev alone, with no KGB people in the field.'
'I've got that for you.'
A lot of weight came off and I took a breath. 'I'm impressed.'
'I thought you would be. What else?'
'Signals direct from me to London, not through his field posts.'
'I've got that too. So you're beginning to see how keen he is to have you. What else?'
'My option to drop the whole operation and get out, given your own sanction.'
'Yes, he wasn't terribly keen on that one, but I managed to get it for you. What else?'
'That's all. That's first class.'
'Thank you. Now there's a man called Hood. That's his real name, but we believe he's using the cover name of Horst Volper in East Berlin, where he may be using very deep cover as a German national. Don't you want to sit down?'
I shifted the paperbacks and dropped onto the bed. 'He's my objective?'
'Yours and Yasolev's. We know very little about him. He's a lone operator, linked by underground rumour to the Aquino assassination and that of the Swedish prime minister in 1986, also with various high-level wet affairs in Paris, Rome and the Orient. He is known to have been in London until three years ago, a socialite moving mainly in government circles as an international financier, under a different name.' He'd begun reflectively massaging the pockmarked skin below his left ear; I'd seen him do it in Berlin. 'We know he left London at that time en route for Geneva, where he sank without trace. We'd been keeping a record on him simply because he's a major figure in clandestine operations, even though he covers his tracks with the greatest efficiency. The next we heard of him was a week ago when the KGB got in touch with the Foreign Office through the Soviet embassy. A request was made to me personally to find, fix and strike, by whatever means.' He'd said that last bit slowly. 'Questions?'
'Is there a dossier?'
'For what it's worth. They'll give it to you when you go through Clearance.'
'When I find him, whose responsibility is it to cut him down?'
Shepley looked away. 'That will depend on the circumstances. You might have the option of handing him over to the KGB or taking care of it yourself. Again, you might not have any choice at all. You know better than I do that we can't foresee the situation.'
I didn't take him up on it, though he probably expected me to. The only time I'd killed except in self-defence had been for personal reasons, to avenge a dead woman, and it had happened between missions. Shepley knew that, but there was no point in talking about it now. I'd make my own decision at the far end of Quickstep, and God knew where that would be or how it would come, or whether I'd still be alive.
'Can I have Ferris?' I asked him.
'No. He's been over there too often. I'm giving you a new man for your director in the field, cover name Cone. I'm sure you don't need his credentials, since I picked him myself.'
'Where do I meet him'
'In Berlin. He's there now, finding you a base.'
'And a safe-house?'
'Your safe-house at any given time will be the nearest KGB headquarters.'
I didn't take him up on that either. I'd find my own safe-house when I got over there. There are times when you've got to vanish, if you can.
'This hostage,' I said. 'He's a major-general?'
'In the Red Army.'
'Where is he now?'
'In Belgrave Square, technically under house arrest.'
'I'd like him released and sent back.'
Shepley tilted his head an inch. 'Why?'
'A major-general isn't very big, with a mission this size on the board. And I want to get Yasolev's trust.'
In a moment, 'Well, now.' He got off the chair and pushed his hands into his jacket pockets and looked everywhere but at me, absorbing the idea and testing it out. His head lifting, eyes on the ceiling — 'You like sailing close to the wind, don't you?'
'I'm not suggesting it for a dare.'
He looked down at me. 'I realise that. So you believe Yasolev is a man of honour?'
'I don't think that matters. It's a question of pride.'
His pale eyes rested on me. 'And you know all about pride, don't you… The problem is, do I let you risk the mission. If — '
'It'd give us a big advantage, if I'm right. We'd be able to trust him, in turn.'
'And if you're wrong?'
'I don't think we'd lose anything. They'd sacrifice one little major-general if it'd pay them.'
He turned away. 'I'll let you have my decision before you're sent out. Have you any more questions?'
'Is there a dossier on Yasolev?'
'Yes. You'll be given that, too, when you go through Clearance. Anything else?'
'Not for now.'
He moved to the door. 'Please know that I shall be controlling Quickstep personally, from my office and from the signals room. I'll be available to you at all times. At all times.' He opened the door. 'Phone me before you leave if you need to.'
Doubts.
'Weapons?'
'No weapons.'
She turned a paper on the desk. 'Initial there, will you?'
She gave me a pen and sat worrying her nose with a small rumpled handkerchief.
'Here?'
'No. This box. Would you like an immunisation shot?'
'What for?'
'So you don't catch this,' her watery blue, eyes concerned.
'I eat too much garlic to catch a cold.'
'Does that help?'
'Never fails. Lose all your friends, that's the only thing.'
'Who needs friends like that? Beneficiary or beneficiaries, any change?'
'No. Home Safe.'
'I checked on that. They've gone out of business.'
'Any other battered wives' home, then. I don't care which.'
'There's the Shoreditch Refuge.'
'That'll do.'
She wrote it down. 'Everything you possess?'
'For what it's worth.'
'Sign here, will you?'
Doubts, following me through the building as I left her and checked in at Codes and Ciphers, certain now that they were setting me up, both of them, Yasolev and Shepley, not necessarily in collusion but each in his own way and for his own ends.
'Give me a plain substitution crypt.'
'One of the alphas?'
'No. A ten-character limit. An aristocrat.'
He flipped through the clear plastic sheets, going from blue to red printing, the light from the window passing through one of his thick lenses and casting a pool across the file. 'What about Little Mary?'
I started to feel trapped, forced into using a code that could blow me if it'd been filched. This room had a steel door and a security man outside and you had to draw a special pass to get in here, but suppose this clerk had been got at by — oh Jesus Christ, is there an immunization shot for paranoia?
'Look, give me Beta-3, the short version for the field.'
'Fair enough.' He swung round and pulled a drawer open and gave me the pad. 'Have you got the Cheltenham scrambler prefix?'
'If I haven't now, I never will.'
'Sorry, I'm new.'
'We've all got to start somewhere.'
Walking through the corridors like a rat in a maze, the subject of an experiment, not a rat, a guinea-pig. It had been too easy; Yasolev had given in too fast — I did not believe a seasoned KGB colonel would partner an operation on East German soil with an agent from the West unless he'd got the entire field staked out with his own little army.
Well, there was this: the instant I got one whiff of his people anywhere near me I'd use my option to pull out and ditch the mission.
Medical room: 'When?'
'Three weeks ago, at Norfolk.'
'Phyllis, no blood to draw. Where's his chart?'
A small room, too small, too confining. To paranoia you can add claustrophobia, but listen, this wasn't normal at this stage; a show of nerves on the way through the access phase, yes, but this was too soon, too severe.
'Heart rate's up a little. Is that usual when you're going out?'
'Yes.'
Say yes to anything.
'Diastolic's a little high, eighty-one. Is that normal too?'
'Yes.'
And why not Ferris for my director in the field?
He was too valuable to lose.
'Are you drawing a capsule?'
'Yes.'
He got his keys and unlocked a cabinet on the wall and took down a phial, pressing hard to undo the safety cap and shaking out one of the small grey cylinders with the red band. 'You need a container too?'
'Yes.'
Another cylinder, bigger, heavy steel, uncrushable.
'All right, sign this, would you?'
Signed.
Travel Section: 'Do you need maps?'
'No. I'll get them locally.'
She gave me the passport. They always give you one with a number that has actually been issued.
'Whose was this?'
She looked surprised. 'I don't know.'
He didn't need it any more — but of course he could've retired, could've retired.
They weren't ready for me in Final Briefing so I went down the circular staircase with the worn plum-red carpet and the mahogany banisters and the scuffs on the wall where people had come down in a hurry, bouncing off the curve. The only man in the Caff was Decker, a new recruit to this echelon from ten months' training in Norfolk; he was sitting at the counter chatting up Daisy, and when he laughed it sounded hollow, so I suppose he was going out on his first assignment and sweating ice.
Puddle of tea on the first table I came to, there is always a puddle of tea on the table in this bloody place, though God knows why because Daisy's always got a dish-rag in her hand, I've never seen her without it.
'Hello, love.'
Blue eye shadow, caked rouge and bright brass hair, body like a barrel, I do wish they'd get a woman in here you could actually look at while your nerves are running a temperature: it'd help bring it down.
'Tea, Daisy.'
'You want a bun?'
'God, one of those?
'I keep tellin' them, but it's all they seem to order.'
She mopped up the puddle and rolled away, lopsided, rheumatism, poor old baggage.
Very well, then, we have to work something out, don't we? Into the breach dear friends, let nothing us dismay, so forth, a matter of life and death — actually, yes, quite possibly, my life and death, if I get it wrong.
And a matter of conscience. Shepley and the Bureau and Yasolev might well be setting me up for extinction as a means to an end, but did that justify my accepting the mission and letting them think I was going through with it on their terms and not mine? Because if I were going out there for them I'd have to work solo and find my own safe-house and go to ground at whatever stage of the mission if I needed to, without consulting them. They were -
'Sugar, love?'
'No.'
She slopped some tea into the saucer, par for the course.
'Thank you.'
They were going to put the whole energy of the Bureau behind me and the whole of Yasolev's department of the KGB but I couldn't work like that and they knew it, or Shepley did, the Bureau did. So why did they choose me for this one?
Why did they choose me, Daisy old dear? With three boards running in the signals room it meant there were five other shadow executives hanging around between missions, five others with my ranking and experience and capability, and three of them — Fletcher, Wainwright, Piers — preferred to work with a whole back-up system of supports and contacts in the field. So why didn't Shepley choose one of them?
Scalding hot tea, just how I wanted it — there's a degree of eroticism in wanting to burn your lips, a nice bit of titillation for the mucous membrane, soothes the nerves. Good old Daisy, it's always piping hot, but listen, what am I going to do?
I could assume they thought I was the best man for the job but even if it were true, Shepley knew the way I liked to work, solo, and he must have given it some thought and he wasn't your common or garden moron. Did he realise that if I took on this one I'd work my way through it alone, deceiving them, and was he prepared for that? It'd salve my conscience, wouldn't it, Daisy old love, but a bit too easily.
The alternatives, then: I could go into Quickstep and work solo without their knowing it and risk blowing up the mission by leaving myself exposed, vulnerable, isolated, or I could go across to the phone over there and call Shepley and tell him no, it still wouldn't work, he'd have to get someone else.
Got a laugh like a barmaid, shaking with it over there by the tea urn, enough to bring her wig off; we secretly believe, you know, that it's really a wig.
And let this be known, my friend: if I walked out of here without going near that phone it would mean that in the name of pride and vanity this shadow executive was ready to go behind the Curtain and try to work through a mission within a mission, already cut off from the people who were running him and already cut off from his Soviet collaborator. And still bring it off, still reach the objective.
The word for this, I truly believe, is megalomania.
Sitting in my sweat, hunched over the table, hands round my cup of tea, torn this way, torn that, a solitary spook goaded by ambition and pricked by conscience and frightened, oh my God if you knew how frightened.
I don't remember how long it was, how long it took, but the dregs of the tea were cold in the cup and I felt old before my time.
'That's all right, dearie. On me. I don't see you in here very often.'
A woman who knew how to love.
I kissed her dry rouged cheek and walked out past the telephone and into the mission, alone.